Vineyards or Vine Trees? 

Hidden across the mountains are ancient, giant vine trees growing on their own roots — remnants of a viticultural tradition that survived centuries of abandonment, isolation, and hardship. These vines were not planted as modern vineyards and are not managed as cultivated crops. Many have survived simply because nature allowed them to.

They are untouched, ungrafted, and completely wild.

• No one irrigates them.

• No one prunes them.

• No one sprays them with chemicals.

• No one cultivates the soil around them.

They grow wherever they have managed to survive — climbing trees, spreading across slopes, and adapting naturally to the harsh mountain environment of Meskheti.

These forgotten vine trees became the starting point of my work.

By studying these ancient vines, I began identifying and documenting the old endemic grape varieties of Meskheti that had survived in the wild. From their fruit, I began making experimental wines — collecting grapes directly from these forgotten vines and allowing the character of the place and the grape itself to speak.

This is how Meskhuri Wine was born: from the wild harvest of ancient Meskhetian vine trees.

Today, we do not create vineyards in the conventional sense. Instead, we search for and harvest these surviving vines throughout the region.

This is perhaps one of the most difficult harvests imaginable.

A single vine may be separated from the next by 30–60 kilometers of mountain roads and remote terrain. We travel from village to village, valley to valley, and mountain to mountain, searching for surviving vines and collecting their grapes by hand.

The harvest is not measured in hectares.

It is measured vine by vine, cluster by cluster, and sometimes berry by berry.

Because these vines grow naturally and produce extremely limited quantities, the harvest can take up to two months.

Our guide is sometimes nothing more than a set of GPS coordinates — locations where I first discovered, documented, and mapped these surviving ancient vines. Some of these places are deep in remote mountain terrain, far from roads and modern vineyards.

We follow these coordinates back into the landscape, searching for the vines I have recorded over the years.

The final grapes are often collected when most vineyards have already finished harvesting. In the highest and coldest parts of Meskheti, the harvest may continue into November, when the first mountain frosts arrive.

In fact, some of our most extraordinary grapes are harvested after the frost has already frozen the clusters on the vine.

This natural freezing concentrates the grapes and transforms their character. The resulting wines can develop remarkable dried-fruit aromas, extraordinary concentration, and naturally high alcohol levels, creating a style of wine deeply connected to the extreme climate in which these vines survive.

Among the last to be harvested is Tamari's Vazi — one of the remarkable surviving vine forms of Meskheti.

This is not simply a late harvest.

It is the final stage of a journey that begins with finding a forgotten vine somewhere in the mountains and ends with carefully collecting its frozen fruit, berry by berry.

Every bottle made from these grapes therefore represents far more than a wine.

It represents a journey through the mountains, the survival of an ancient vine, and the recovery of a piece of Meskheti's forgotten viticultural heritage.